


Moonlight

by JadeviBritannia



Series: Beyond the Worlds [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Fantasy, M/M, Magic, Magician! Viktor, Parallel Universes, Soulmates, Worlds!AU, Writer! Yuuri, more characters as we go along - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 17:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9617705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeviBritannia/pseuds/JadeviBritannia
Summary: There is no such thing as coincidence, only fate.orIn which Viktor and Yuuri find each other in all the worlds.First world - Luna City





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based on Tsubasa Chronicles, xxxHolic and Chrestomanci series, where in each parallel universe, there exist a you; a different you born of different experiences. Viktor and Yuuri exist in all the worlds, and they find each other - always. 
> 
> (But not always in the right place, and at the right time).

 

The first is a moonlit world where the sun never shone; where the moon draped its cool arms across the still waters of the sea, lighting the surface before its light sinks down and the water remains tranquil, deep, and undisturbed. The moon is a goddess, watching over her lands; she lets the sea keep its secrets while she draws her gaze fondly unto her people who worshipped her religion.

 

Magic collects in the air, heavy like it’s taking a deep breath; Viktor Nikiforov lets it sink into his body, lighting his skin and tracing blue fire across his fingertips.

 

He digs his toes unto the cool sand, safely behind the city walls, listening to the breeze as it flits through his hair, whispering melodies of faraway lands. He lifts his fingers and watches the flames dance on his skin.

 

His city had been honed by time, beautiful and stationary in between unperturbed waves; and while dynasties rose and fell and cultures crumbled, his people practiced the pull of the moon and immersed in her magic. 

 

The moon was impervious to neither prayer nor weak to praise; she alone decided when to bring down the waters surrounding their city so their land can be traversed by footsteps of the long forgotten outside world.

 

 _It has been a long hundred years_ , Viktor thinks, turning one last longing gaze into the distant lands before making his way home, watching the trace of his footsteps glimmer faintly in the sand.

 

His feet soon encounter cobblestones, gray and uneven, a rustic grace to its beauty. In front of him a castle looms, pale and foreboding against the moonlight, its spires rising majestic against the deep blue of the night sky. The pavement weaves itself up in between houses made of wood and stone and lime, and enchantments, lighted by floating blue spheres of cold flame.

 

 _The castle is the goddess' home when she comes down to the world to mingle with her people,_ his mother used to whisper fondly, lighting the lamps of their home with blue flames. He walks.

 

At this late in the night, only the night watchers are present, they are guardians of the city and the knights of the moon, their staves emitting soft pulses of white and blue. Viktor whistles a soft greeting of music, watching it fly across the space between them; the notes are reminiscent of the chirping of moon birds, trills soft and sharp and small before fading into the quiet of the night.

 

He soon sees his home, familiar and disheartening all at once. Sometimes he dreams of light and heat and eyes of russet red smiling warmly at him, burning like hundreds of stars. Hands always extend to grasp his, stringing him along to a new adventure; he always reaches out to grasp, wanting, wanting, but within a space of a hundred breaths the dream fades out and he's left miserable _(the warmth is there, right at his fingertips, if he can only reach out) and_ guilty _(at the yearning to leave)_ all at once.

 

He sighs, slides the door open, and sees the familiar blue flames. His mother is sitting by the living room, smiling in welcome; she is like the moon, with hair as pale as moonlight and eyes the color of the sea. He sees similar features on his own delicate face, feels the answering lift of his mouth into a smile as he kisses his mother's hand in a gesture of respect.

 

"By the sea, again, my darling Vitya?" She asks softly, serene, reflecting the grace of a goddess, running her fingers through the delicate strands of his long hair as he settles his head on her lap.

 

She is a goddess, Viktor sometimes thinks, smiling fondly at her as he nods his head slightly.

 

 She understands, has always understood, the too bright fire underneath Viktor's skin, thrumming in nervous energy, settling into the balls of his feet.

 

Viktor sometimes feels he can run forever and not look back.

 

His mother just smiles, humming a tune from the outside world. It is a melody she has heard when she was little, when the moon had decided visitors could come visit the city; it tells of a man waiting for his lover, waiting for him so they could leave together.

 

Viktor listens to it, relaxes to the song, and closes his eyes.

 

He still dreams of russet red.

 

\--

 

Viktor slowly roused from deep sleep, consciousness filled with fog. He claws his way to wakefulness, rubbing his hand over his eyes.  It is morning, he thinks, as he hears the cacophony of the household and of the streets.

 

The moon is compassionate today, its light the palest like the color of morning dew. He hears the peddlers taking advantage of her mercy, setting up their wares in the cobblestone paths at the first light.

 

Viktor dons his coat. It is the color of frost, adorned by swatches of the deepest blue and stitched into place with the lightest of threads. Here and there in the voluminous fabric, the diamonds sparkle, reflecting the moon’s light into tiny fragments of color across his room. He grabs his staff and trudges into the living room. He placates his mother with a kiss on the cheek, an airy laugh and a bite of the _gwyren_ she prepared, warm from the oven and filled with custard, the fragrance of flowers wafting into the air.

 

He bids her goodbye and marches into the streets, weaving in between the busy traffic of the streets,

 

“Hello, Celestial!” Children greet him loudly, pressing their hands together expectantly as they come to a stop before him. He purses his lips and pretends to think while the children watch with bated breath. He gives in, snaps his fingers, and the blue light rises from his skin, forming into a miniature dragon made of winter’s fire. It curls up into the little girl’s hands, closing its diamond-like eyes. She gasps, her eyes shining in excitement, while her little brother presses his small finger unto the dragon’s head. He only feels the chill instead of the flame.

 

“Thank you, Celestial!”  They say, eyes on the miniature dragon as it wakes and twines its body on the younger brother’s wrist.

 

Viktor just laughs, and makes his way down to the castle keep. While most people knew how to set up blue spheres of life as part of everyday life, the castle keep is where most magicians practiced their arts, which are benign and dangerous and intoxicating all at once.

 

There are guardians too, watching over the castle keep; as he enters its solemn pathways the guardians bow their heads slightly, acknowledging him.  He is the Celestial, the city’s Guardian; it is he who holds the most accolades, the greatest of magics; he is the sentinel of the moon’s palace, the keeper of her light.

 

Viktor closes the heavy doors of his office and slumps against the doors, feeling the heavy burden of his responsibility falling over him like a mantle too hot to be ignored.  It is stifling, suffocating.

 

It is not the first time. When once, he enjoyed the honors granted to him by the Lilia Baranovskaya, the City’s Chief Priestess, the moon’s representative on land; it now weighs heavy on him, like shackles on his feet preventing his flight.

 

He sighs. Viktor sits down on his upholstered seat, waits for the knock on the door to signal the Chief Priest’s arrival to start his day.

 

On cue, it arrives, brisk and sharp before it opens, Yakov Feltsman’s face almost hidden by the magnitude of documents he brings. Viktor stifles a laugh despite himself.

 

“What are these for, Yakov?”

 

Yakov grunts, setting it down to the table before scowling at him angrily. “You forgot to pick these up from my office yesterday! I told you to see to the documents requesting the attention of the Celestial!”

 

Viktor smiles faintly. Yakov sees the amusement riding on Viktor’s lips, and he erupts into another diatribe of rage.

 

“—If your forgetfulness could apply one second to your daydreams of seeing past the waters behind the walls!” Yakov finishes, slightly purple in the face. Viktor’s smile drops for an instant before it regains power and he smiles blindingly, waving his hand airily in Yakov’s face.

 

“I’ll do them today, Yakov.” He says, blithely ignoring Yakov’s last remark and pulling the first document from the top of the pile. He reads through it quickly, feeling the burn of Yakov’s stare where it seems to be trained on his forehead.

 

It seems to be a request in night watchers to man the castle keep; Viktor runs through the document and sees that it had been both preemptively signed by Lilia and Yakov, and while both of them barely see eye to eye in matters concerning their marriage, they have never done him wrong with decision making in running the city.

 

Viktor pushes a bit of his magic into his official seal and watches it flare briefly before setting it down firmly on top of the document.  He flips it through, sets it aside, and grabs the next copy.

 

When Yakov sees that Viktor seems to have matters well in hand, he hums in approval before turning to go give his attention to his work, which was to supervise the lessons of the magicians in training, dealing with use of weaponry and the body in dealing with damages and attacks.

 

“Lilia has requested your assistance for this afternoon’s training session.” Yakov says before leaving the room, without waiting for Viktor’s answer, which is just as well; Viktor has not known anyone who has ever refused the Chief Priestess’s demand and lived to tell the tale.

 

Well, he’s heard the rumors, but he wagers they may be true anyway. He won’t be the first one to start now.

 

He mumbles his acquiesce to an empty room.

 

\--

 

Viktor looks up from his documents when he realizes the moon has started to shine its midmorning light, casting dark shadows unto the next request he’s grasping in his hand; it is only then he realizes that his back his aching, and his eyes are watering from staring into text for hours too long.

 

He stretches, stands on his feet, and walks to the window facing the courtyard. Yakov is there, and it’s no surprise; he’s there like clockwork, training another fledging magician into becoming the best he could be.

 

Viktor thinks that Yakov is looking for the next Celestial after him too.

 

He is a young thing, wraithlike with hair strands the color of wheat; when Yakov barks out a reprimand, slapping the young magician lightly with his staff to correct his form, he sees the petulant curve of his lip, the arrogant tilt of his head and the angry set of his brows.

 

It’s Yuri Plisetsky, Viktor remembers, the young magician who lived with his grandfather after his mother had immediately fled from the city a hundred years ago, when the water loosened its protective embrace on the city’s walls.

 

Yuri trains with the Chief Priestess as well, Viktor thinks, honing his abilities to be soft and yielding like water; healing aches and pains and nourishing the world with life.

 

Viktor draws his gaze to a farther end of the courtyard, where a bright red head reflects the midmorning light, moving through a form her body recognized even in her sleep. As she twisted her hand above her hand, blue flame erupts from her fingertips, circling her like dragon’s fire; when she lifted her foot, a similar blue orb rises. When she turns on her heel, the orb follows, twisting around her until she is a dancer lit ablaze before his eyes.  When she stops turning, the orb fizzles out, until only the light of the moon remains. He can see her laughing, childlike in her glee.

 

 _Mila_ , Viktor thinks fondly. He presses his hands to the glass, and wonders when he stopped feeling the elation for performing rituals for the moon goddess.

 

\--

 

“Like this, Yuri.” Viktor says, curling his hand into a fist before slowly releasing the tension, watching as a swirl of pale blue energy twisted on his palm. “This is _hælan,_ one of the mid-tier spells for non-combatant magic, capable of healing minor to moderate wounds. It would ease aches and pains too!”

Viktor says the last happily, alternating the swirl’s size in his palm from a miniscule orb to a large eddy of energy buffeting his long, untied hair.

 

“Stop showing off, Viktor!” Yuri Plisetsky huffs, crossing his arms. His eyes, however, remains riveted onto the energy swirling on Viktor’s palm.

 

Viktor laughs lightly and lets the swirl dissipate to the air. “Now you try. Remember, you have to gather the energy into your first and release it at the same you uncurl your fingers.”

 

Yuri nods, brows furrowed in concentration while he curled his first, straining the nerves on his wrist before releasing…nothing.

 

Viktor pats him on the back. “Well, no worries. Not everyone gets it on their first try.”

 

“Everyone not you.” Yuri grumbles.

 

Viktor hums, affirmative. “Everyone not me.”

 

“Stop shoving your genius in my face!” Yuri yells, stomping his foot in his first gesture of adolescent anger.

 

“Stop screaming, Yuri.” Lilia snaps, shoving both her arms into her own voluminous sleeves. “It is unbecoming of a magician. “ _Hælan_ will be one of your most commonly used spells as a magician, which is why you have to constantly practice.” Lilia says, releasing her own _hælan_ in her palm. “You have to feel the size which feels best for you; too big and you may lose control, too small and you may be better off using _eide_ as your spell since it will be more effective.”

 

Yuri nods, resuming his practice for _hælan’s_ form. It is a while before a spark appears in Yuri’s palm; when he grows too excited, feverish in excitement, it fizzles out, briefly as it came.

 

Yuri muffles an oath. Lilia raises her eyebrow, but does not comment. She turns her eyes back to her other students, leaving Yuri with Viktor. Viktor amuses himself with performing other feats of magic before Yuri, aggravating and distracting the fledging magician, who desperately tries to ignore him, focusing on his lesson.

 

Glēd, _[blãvas](https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=blavas&action=edit&redlink=1)_ _, drakeîn,_ _[vetur](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vetur#Icelandic)_ , _þinsaną – Viktor_ mindlessly draws on his memories, performing magic with a level of grace and position no one else has been able to master.

 

Viktor knows he is the best. This is why he is the Celestial, after all.

 

Ultimately Yuri snaps at him to go off so he can concentrate, and Viktor, feeling the familiar dregs of restlessness flitting through his veins, leaves him to the clutches of the Chief Priestess before going back to his favorite place.

 

By now the moon has lowered from its highest point in the sky; the moon has started to set. He stops by a market stall and purchases a _brydh_ , a flaky dough with nuts and sprinkled with sugar, and walks to the sand on the outskirts of the city.

 

Here only his footsteps have recently marked the passage of time; traces of his coming has not completely been extinguished. The water beyond the wall is as untroubled as always. He takes off his shoes, digs them in the sand, and imagines a place, far away, where the sand is hot from the sun’s rays and he hears the sound of the waves crashing to the beach.

 

 _Where do you want to go?_   He imagines that Russet eyes asks, as Viktor looks into the distance, marveling at the wonders beyond what his naked eyes could see.

 

He extends his hand, watches the moon’s light shining in between them, and thinks, _anywhere with you._

 

\--

 

It is nearly two months after when Viktor glimpses that the water beyond the wall has receded; while the rest of the inhabitants live on, unaware and uncaring, Viktor grapples with excitement, watching with bated breath as it receded slowly, torturously, each day.

 

“Yakov, Lilia!” Viktor exclaims, breathless, as he rushes into the castle keep. “The water is ebbing!”

 

“What are you talking about, Vitya?” Lilia asks, eyes never leaving the book she is reading.

 

“The water is going down! It won’t be a while, but later on the water will have ebbed enough and we can see visitors in the city again!”

 

Yakov and Lilia are pleasantly surprised; the last had been a hundred years before, and there were necessary preparations, fortifications to be completed, before they could even accept outsiders into their home. But all the same, visitors meant new goods, things to trade, news of the outside world, even if the city will not be wrought to change.

 

They start preparing, Yakov and Lilia organizing the street peddlers for their trade; it does not take much to convince the merchants, since the enthusiasm for new things has never waned. Each household cleans and arranges furniture and fixes the blue orb lights until they shine to perfection. The pavements are immaculate. Everything is as good as new.

 

Viktor is tasked to add more safeguards to the city’s walls, day by day blanketing it with more magic until it surrounds them, heavy even in the breeze as they breathe air to their lungs; the magic in the air fills the people with energy, as they start preparing, and furnishing, and changing, until it looks like a festival.

 

There is a bated breath of expectation in the air; the townsfolk only know of the outside world from years of long ago; the children believe the outside world to be mere legends, stories of old.

 

For Viktor, it is a chance, a continuation of the melody his mother sings; anticipation curls in his gut, as he checks and checks and checks, watching the water, desperately wishing for the moon to be at her most benevolent.

 

After 5 months when Viktor has first seen that the water level has dropped, everyone has finished preparing, and they wait joyously, with each passing day, as more and more of the terrain becomes visible to the naked eye.

 

It is after 2 more months that the waters have died down, and the city’s gates have opened, and Viktor first steps foot into the outside. He breathes in the air and touches the land, still damp from the water, and looks up at the moon. She is vibrant now, wide and almost within reach, shining in all her glory. Viktor feels like he could float and touch the sky.

 

After a month after the gates have opened; travelers come their way, curiosity lining their faces. They gasp in delight at the exploits of magicians, exchange their foreign currency with the city’s produce, tell stories of dragons and lions and princesses and princes, knights and lords; they spin tales of valor and honor, of love and heartbreak and betrayal, and the city is enraptured, in love.

 

It is on this day when a man with russet red eyes comes into the city.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The basis of the city is Mont Saint-Michel in France.
> 
> Creative liberties taken on the use of the following words:  
> gwyren - Welsh; cake  
> Hælan - Old English; cure  
> eide - Old French; aid  
> Glēd -Old English; glowing coal, fire or ember  
> blãvas- Lithuanian; blue  
> drakeîn - Ancient Greek ; dragon  
> vetur - Icelandic; winter  
> þinsaną - Proto-Germanic; dance  
> brydh - Albania, bread
> 
> Please leave a comment if you like this fic! You can chat with me through [tumblr](jadevibritannia@tumblr.com%20).


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